I was searching for something in my hard drive and I discovered this from a decade ago. With very little concern towards my sanity and with a very high probability of being subjected to ridicule, I represent this here with edits for grammar only.
It is positively cringe-worthy. You have been warned.
“Don’t serve me once my bill crosses 350 bucks; it’s all I have on me tonight,” he said to the bartender as his fourth drink of the evening was placed in front of him. It appeared to me as a strange request. I couldn’t stop myself from turning to my left and seeing the face of this man who apparently had no self-restraint. He was very ordinary, a face you wouldn’t remember from a crowd. No distinguishing features in appearance or clothing, but he had the manners of a thoroughbred. “Last week of the month you see, not much cash remains,” he said to me with a smile that was both apologetic and a justification from the perspective of his strange request. I nodded and returned the smile.
The irony of my presence at the bar was that I was very badly in need of a break. I was trying to build upon an idea for a story but couldn’t even get started but finally ended up getting a story here. Long back I had watched a movie where this nerdy character could identify people who had strange lives which could make interesting stories. At this point in life, I was wishing that I’d known him somehow...
“I’m sorry, but do you have a light?” this man asked me, breaking my reverie. “Um, no. I don’t smoke,” I said. Maybe it appeared to him that I was depressed with life, an alcoholic trying to drown his sorrows on the rocks. It is natural for one to be biased towards himself and so this presumptive thought of mine as to what he thought of me felt slightly offensive. A friend of mine who had studied psychology had once told me that it is easy to get negative thoughts when you are not happy. I remember telling her that you needn’t study psychology for that info; grandmas would give it to you free of cost. But now I got the actual meaning of what she said. So much for Mr Freud!
I’ve always believed that life’s definitions change with age, or time if it is more polite. Back in the days of studying, timetables meant which person would waste his time as well as mine. Now, it meant that you sleep around a certain time of the day, wake up at another particular time gap, and so on. Monotony, in a way that appeared very flexible but never was. Think of it. You wake up daily at around seven, not exactly seven; thanks to the snooze button. Possibly you brush, bathe and get ready in the next sixty minutes. Maybe the time you dedicate for each action varies with the day of the week but the time gap is still the same; 0700-0800hrs. Breakfast is finished with the newspaper in the next thirty minutes and you leave home by about 0830-0845hrs. But mostly somewhere in between would be the actual time. Anyway, in my life’s monotony, I go to bed at around 2300hrs, which indirectly meant I had to leave by 2130hrs. Around 2130hrs I mean. I assumed it was five or ten minutes past eight and raised my left arm to check the time, and found that my watch was missing. It took me a few moments to remember that I’d given it for repairs for changing the glass. “It’s 8.07, sir,” he said leaning over to me.
“Excuse me?”
“I presumed you wanted the time and understood you have no watch, for now, so I informed you of the time,” he explained; his mischievous smile returning. I was almost nonchalant. “Fourth drink and you can still observe such minute details? What are you, a secret spy?” I wanted to be on par with him in cracking drunkard jokes. I’m not sure if it was the joke or something else but he laughed loudly, much to the annoyance of a few people around. “My name’s Bond, James Bond!” he said with a smile which clearly indicated he was not sober anymore.
“Well sadly, I’m not the sexy woman you’d seduce,” I replied; quietly grinning for having won this round of jokes as well. He became just a bit less funny and asked, “So what brings you here, to this gloomy place when most people spend time with their families?”
“Ah well, I dunno... I guess you can say work pressure.”
“Right, pretty common,” he nodded.
“Hmmm... What about you? Family throw you out?”
“Not really, no. I’m a wanderer, a lonely soul. This is just one of the many pit stops that I have.”
I didn’t like the tone of that. It could imply anything, from malice to threaten; or from sympathy to homosexuality. Maybe even from eccentricity to a career in tourism but it was insufficient data for concrete analysis. Plus, the fact that I’m an introvert but found it easy to chat with this person seemed disturbingly uncharacteristic. Feeling a sense of urgency to change the track, I gulped down my drink and ordered another one.
It appeared to have worked. He was silent, but only for five seconds, after which he started acting the clown again and ordered for a vodka martini! Worse, he followed it with a “shaken, not stirred” irritation. “Sir Fleming just turned in his grave I think,” I smiled.
“You know all this Bond hype? It’s fake. It’s also created and manipulated. They always say Bond was created based on Fleming’s friend...”
“‘Sir’ Fleming,” I tried to correct him. He stared at me, putting on a look which had annoyance in it as much as it had anger.
“Doesn’t matter, now that he’s turned in his grave, does it?” he said, winked and smiled altogether. I accepted my defeat.
“Anyway, Bond wasn’t created based on his friend as they say. It was just an idea that occurred to him when he was getting high at a beach bar in the Caribbean. How he got the idea when he was drunk you ask? Easy! He was just talking to the waiter who said he’d rather go to college than serve drinks. Bloke asked why he was serving then and he says his dad is a spy and so he can’t afford school. Remember, back in the days espionage was an essentiality, not a career option for hunks with an IQ of 200+ and lightning reflexes. They didn’t get flashy cars, striped suits and Swiss accounts with eight digits amounts in it. Espionage was for the litter bags, for those morons who couldn’t find any other job, not even hacking beef at the local butcher’s. There was nothing to be proud of in it; there was just risk. The one thing possibly that hasn’t changed over the years is that they are still expected to give up their lives before giving out any info. You might remember, it was near the ‘50s and ‘60s that Bond was born. What does that mean? Fleming, Sir Fleming I mean, took enough time to collect details of these poor lost boys of the world wars and then felt obliged to honour them. So he did just that. He made spies and spying appear classy. He took them from the closet, dusted them, painted them and placed them next to Batman and Superman. He made them better, I might add. They still wore their underwear inside their pants and they were still humans; living, operating and fearing in between other humans itself... Yeah, he made them that; and then some! How could I forget? He added the most attractive part as an afterthought – women. Imagine, Bond gets like at least a couple of chicks in each story. Has anyone ever wondered why he never got AIDS? Condoms ain’t the answer my friend; that was protection and it came much later. Give it a thought. When Bond was making merry, AIDS was unknown. So, in essence, the author never knew of the existence of what is quite possibly the most dangerous STD of all times all over the world. That was why Bond was immune. Get you thinking, have I now? That’s the point. Slam-bang-whizz-kiss-story ends; everyone is happy. Nobody wants to dig for the truth. Oh yes sir, I noticed the movement of your eyebrows. I know you have a question. Most likely it is about Sir Fleming’s presence in the British defence. Well, he was there, he served in it. So what? Thousands of them were there. They served, they retired. Most lived a silent retired life and died a silent death; our man took a cigar and a pen. Talk about standing out in the crowd! He sure did that. Vodka martini my butt.”
I was stunned. But I did not want him to know he had me interested in this. I still felt compelled to be a step ahead of him. Being unaware of how to react, I returned to complete my drink. It became a priority to win this battle. Being egotistical has its troubles as it becomes hard to let go without coming up trumps. So, there it was. I had to reply, I had to counter-attack.
“That must be your favourite trick.” There was a fake boredom in my voice.
“I didn’t get you,” he said. He sounded confused, which immediately gave me the sense of having the upper hand again.
“All this criticism of Bond and the author, backed by the apparent historical connection... you do this at every bar you go to, I feel. Maybe impress a couple o’ guys, have them gawking at you and then enjoy the attention. You might even be bought a drink or who knows, get laid! I don’t deny the intelligence that is oozing out o’ you have got to end up in someone else’s brain, but then it simply isn’t good manners to disrespect an idea that has been well set in the minds of the general public. Correct me if I’m wrong but it is undoubtedly the inclusion of the apparent ‘facts’ about spies and espionage of yesteryears that fuels this verbal blitzkrieg to produce convincing stories, although faux and unconfirmed, making you the star of the evening. I was impressed as well, I’ll admit. But not with the story, it was with your idea. All the same, you never explained the sources of your findings in this research of the making of Bond. That, my friend, is a flaw. A loophole, I might add. Pardon me, but Sir Fleming turned in his grave again! In the opposite direction this time and almost certainly he would want to pat my back.”
It was his turn to be stunned and mine to remain at peace. I gladly looked away from him as he continued staring; slowly and smoothly. I felt like Hannibal Lector, getting inside the mind of the investigating officer and yet remaining behind the bars at all times.
“So you think I’m lying?” The pain was obvious and maybe justified for him. He was after all, in all probability getting the attention he yearned for. Maybe it worked till he met me this fateful evening.
“I didn’t say that. I just pointed out that there is no evidence for what you claim. You gave me some facts, startling facts but no proof. Nor did you present before me the modus operandi of how you acquired them. That’s all. I’m not enjoying troubling you if that thought is bugging you. I’m not a sadist, just a pessimist; a cynical pessimist at best but surely not a sadist. You can say I’m the kind o’ guy who’d prefer discussing boring economic projections to extramarital affairs, simply for the fact that the projections are made taking into account the data available up to the previous year...”
I was messing up his mind, or so I thought. Or what was left of it anyway. He’d been tipsy for a while now. And all I needed for disturbing it was a simple but assertive projection of truth. Robert Ludlum through Bourne had said that the complexity of a trap lies in its simplicity. I was hoping to do something similar. I was being the architect of his downfall and yet on the surface, I was just indulging in a drunken conversation. Who would suspect?
“Would anything change if I were to tell you I found out these and many other facts related to scams before I was fired from the research wing of a renowned museum?” There was seriousness in his voice and he sounded like he was negotiating a million dollar deal which was slipping out of his hands.
“I think not. I wouldn’t know you were employed, nor would I know about you being fired. Add to it the fact that you didn’t name either the museum or the reason why you were fired.”
“That’s it! I can’t take it anymore. I am angry now, not because you have been prodding the hollowness in my facts but because you talk like you know everything. You seem to be closed to the possibility that sometimes people are bound by invisible strings that control their lives to the extent of even manipulating their breath. Believe me, hypothetical situations are sometimes more troubling than the harshest of realities. The misfortune that looms over the very existence of a few condemned souls would make death seem like a reward. I hope you at least subscribe to the fact that what is a very huge problem for one might not even be a bother for another. It is the same kind of reasoning that I can give you about my employment and the lack of proofs for what I’ve been saying. I’m not asking you for compassion or sympathy but just look at it from a different angle. Make an assumption that I did provide proof and then do your analyses. Even though you may not admit it, you will begin wondering if this was how it actually was; if this was the truth and yet you were accepting falsifications as facts. Go on, close your eyes and give it a thought. Imagine the possibility of what I said being the real truth.”
This was bad. He was getting emotional and that meant he was getting weak. I couldn’t help being sympathetic. Yet, what he said was food for thought. Imagine that he was right! Interesting...
“Got you pretty bad, have I? Alright; I call for a truce. Here’s the deal – I won’t question your ‘facts’ and you are going to tell me about these scams. How about it?”
He did not reply immediately. It appeared that he was suspicious of me now and it would be hard to blame him for it. After all, I had been cutting him across all this while. Or was he calculating his next move? I’d never know!
“How do I trust that you are the kind of listener I would like talking to? We haven’t been getting along quite well so far,” he said matter-of-factly.
“And what is the kind of listener you would like to be talking to, exactly?”
“Not your kind of listeners, for sure! Ah, my word; your exorbitant haughtiness. You think too highly of yourself, sir. Not a good attitude that is. You are too full of yourself; you are supporting yourself on your ego. Your pride, more often than not, comes in the way of your rational thinking.”
“Hmmm... But I thought we agreed upon to listen to what you had to say about your work-related or ex-work related, actual or factual scams or whatever it is that they are. Instead, we end up listening to an analysis of my personality of which I must inform you, nothing is new for me.”
“See? This is what I’ve been saying!!! Be a listener for God’s sake, not a questioner. Blessed must have been your teachers if they managed to stay alive while teaching you. Honestly, did you not question them why the Arc-de-Triomphe was built in France and not in India?”
“Surprisingly for you my dear friend, I did not ask that question. I only happened to question the very idea of its construction, in France or India or elsewhere.”
I, in my entire ego, would never give in to him; or to anyone for that matter. It is a weakness as well as strength. But so far, only once in my life had it been used against me, forcing me to make it my weakness and breaking me apart. Was this stranger to be the second one in that list or yet another addition to the long list of victims of my ego? Only time would tell.
He laughed heartily again. “You are impossible! I have seen witty blokes and I have seen huge-headed people. But what is different in you is that though you have high quantities of both, they are balancing each other out so you get admired, silently but strongly.”
I had been taught ages ago that if people praise you it is mostly to their advantage, so don’t heed to it. It had been repeatedly drilled into my mind and that became counterproductive; in a way. Now when people actually praised me, without intent, I would still take a step back.
“How very nice of you, but I’m not into dating males. Sorry. Well, now that we’ve buried that hatchet, I guess we can move on. How about you start spinning your mills of endless yarn, so that I get to know what kind of scams are there which have been the cruxes of your esteemed work?”
“Hard talk there eh, monsieur? Alright-y now, here goes nothing. I need your (hic) confidence that you will not discuss this elsewhere, putting confidentiality into jeopardy.”
“Non monsieur, what you need is water. You have begun losing balance, if you’ve noticed. I’m thankful that these chairs have backs or I’d have had to pick you up from the floor by now. As for jeopardising the confidentiality, you seem to be doing it better than me as it were, right now. You have my word.”
“Go talk to Shakespeare like that. Give me plain words and plain English, if you must. And some water like you said... Merci monsieur.”
A couple of beers on an empty stomach do have an effect on the mind, surely. It loosens you a bit. I get an impression that in my case this was the exact reason why I could chat so easily with him. I poured him a glass of water and he downed it in a single gulp.
“Ah... that was refreshing!” he said contentedly. “So, where do I begin with? Hmmm... Alright. There are scams and there are huge, really huge, scams. Like the Enron ones or the Goldman Sachs things, which are blockbusters in themselves. I never got to play around with cases of such magnitude; because to be honest, they are not really as interesting as the tiny ingenuities. I was more inclined towards getting to know scams which were so well organised and yet had such low profiles that it would be very long and very hard to even uncover them. They are things that happen daily, right in front of you. But like I said, they are too tiny that the common man doesn’t bother about them. What newspaper do you read daily?”
“Huh? What do you mean? What does the paper that I read have to do anything with this? And why does it come all of a sudden from nowhere?”
“Well never mind the name. How much does it cost? Don’t answer that. Three bucks, usually. Standard prices will be like that, anywhere, right? Yes, of course. There was this orphan who was given this job of paper distribution by a kind bank manager. Now of course that banker wasn’t wealthy enough for a full blown adoption and so he did what he could and ensured a living at least. The orphan, who started out young, maybe when he was nine I think, went on to make a million in the next 17 years after which he bought a stake in the bank that his patron was working in, and presented him half of that stake; in return for having kept him alive. Please! No questions from you. Just listen with the assumption that proof is provided. Imagine, paper distribution gave him millions. How? He devised a brilliant method, and yet so simple that no could ever say nor do anything about it or against it. There are 365 days a year, right? So imagine you pay three bucks each day for the paper. That is nearly a grand a year from one household per paper. When he started off, he was handed over the responsibility of a colony with merely 11 or 12 houses. That meant ten grand a year, counting income only. But, the difference is that there were different papers and that meant different prices. Now, what would happen if for 25 days a month you paid for your paper, and the rest of the days for another paper? The difference would be hardly noticeable. Expecting a bill of say something near a hundred you would pay that, without cross checking. This boy, God, what a brain he had! He would deliberately misplace the papers and the households. Give a pricier paper one in a while to an unsuspecting customer and charge him much more by playing around with his bill. You get me here?”
“No, I’m not sure I get the math part of it. Finally, no matter which paper you receive, you pay only for those. So where’s the loss?”
“It is exactly this thought that made a job as flimsy as paper distribution a cash milking cow here. The math is like this: you get your three buck paper for 25 days. For 3 days you get a paper that costs 4 and for the remaining 2 days, you get a 2 buck paper. You wouldn’t keep track of such minute details right? Anyway, in this arrangement, the bill is 25 times 3 plus 3 times 4 plus 2 times 2. That makes it 91. Now, in the bill, you are given 26 times 3 plus 4 times 4 plus 1 time 2 which is 96. Get the math now?”
“No way! 5 bucks extra per paper per house, which is 50 to 60 extra a month for the colony and roughly 3/4th of a grand each year. Agreed he makes a profit but how’s he going to make millions of this? At this rate, 17 years would only make 17 grand. Taking 2 or 3 papers a house would double it or worse, triple it making half a million at best. No, you got your math wrong.”
“Agreed totally, but you forgot a tiny detail. There is a banker, so there is an account, so there is an interest, and in 17 yrs my friend, it more than doubles. It inflates, almost obscenely. His patience paid off, and in the range of 31 to 33 times the initial investment. That was done majorly by the banker’s knowledge, shifting it from one fund to the other for higher returns. Of course, he wasn’t to blame. He was still helping the boy he picked from the street after all. In fact, he never got to know about the scam and when he did, he was so enraged that he donated the stake he was presented and quit his job citing ‘personally binding moral and ethical implications.’ Then he left the city and relocated to a city which he never made known to many. Clearly, he was very shaken by the happenings.”
That was a brilliant story. The only thing I could do was sit and stare in awe. Newspapers and millions, is there even a comparison? And yet, this fraud was such a speck of dust that would hardly be noticed. It took me some time to get back to my usual, irritatingly questioning self.
“Wow... he gets my respect and admiration. What’s his name?”
“Oh no! No names or details like that. No country names or street names, or names of banks or anything. I am already spilling out so much, I can’t risk more.”
“Jeez, you are weird, I say! Fine, can I at least ask you how the fraud was uncovered and if he was nabbed?”
I couldn’t understand what was it that I said which made him stare at me like he was a Jew and I was Hitler, but chained. If it was a magnum or a sawn-off in his hand instead of a bar glass he’d have probably blown my head off to smithereens!
“What? Why are you staring at me?” I asked him, scared and confused. The thought of him being a homosexual serial rapist killer did have crossed my mind although it was apparently farfetched. But the point is the thought had crossed.
“You watch movies?” he asked me. I would have started to explain elaborately about my love for movies but somehow I was able to stop myself. Considering that I had downed a few drinks, it was an achievement.
“Sometimes, when I am free and when there’s a movie available. Why so?” I replied.
“Watched Match Point by Woody Allen?”
“Your man starred in that movie? Nice break he got, I’ll say.” My attempts to get over him were involuntary and clearly irritating.
“Where were you born, in a veterinary hospital? What kind of an A-hole answers a question with a question?” He was angry and it showed with the choice of his words.
“My kind. Fine, I’m sorry. Now the answer is yes, I have. What of it?”
“A question again! Heavens, you are the limit... chuck it. The thing that I wanted to say is that you saw that the movie ended without the hero getting caught. Same here. There might have been a fraud but there has been no case, no proof. He might be guilty but legally he’s clean as a whistle.”
“And parents all over believe that education gives you intelligence. Nice idea, as it happens. He’s still in the business? I mean it is one thing to have your paper boy as a millionaire and the eccentricity too, is something to smile about.” I was trying to replace his anger with smiles but I could only provide lame jokes.
“Like I said, no details. That was one of the nicest cases. Simple, effective and neat.”
“I’ll say. How many such cases would’ve happened? Not the paper boy becomes millionaire stories but million-worth scams which go untraceable?” This was soon becoming an interview.
“Lots of them in fact. The amount of such cases is so overwhelming that when I was new to the job I refused to believe it. The human is always a sucker for greed. Even the straightest of arrows can be bent. If not with pressure, then with force, but they bend. There’s no one who is clean and sane. The worst ones are not those who pick on their own, the worst are those who pick on the helpless. You don’t feel like dropping a coin into a blind beggar’s bowl, I don’t despise you. But you pick the coins from his bowl; I pray that you have the worst of deaths.”
I clearly remember thinking at that moment that whatever he’s having must be good. He was going on like the Oriental Express in its full glory. What made it even more evident was that he was getting philosophical and using ironic metaphors.
When he stopped this time, I was confused between the options of butting into his conversation and waiting for him to continue. I did not want to break his flow by talking and I was not used to waiting for such a long time in a monologue, and I was feeling uneasy. Luckily for me, he continued without my provocation.
“You hear about the best French wines being prepared by processed which include the grapes being crushed by feet? The belief is that this process has some contribution to the magnificent taste. I mean feet and taste? What is the connection anyway!” he said and guffawed. It already amazed me that there was a scam in this as well! I was all ears.
“Anyway, this particular fact just popped into my mind when I saw that wine bottle over there, that’s all. So where was I?”
What a dampener... He had me excited for a moment there. There was a tiny bout of anger welling up deep inside me. I felt like I was just taken for a ride. When you are alone, it always happens that you talk to yourself inside your head, that it’s a never ending conversation you have with the inner person inside you, that one thought leads to another continuously and you might get violent mood swings, amazing ideas, path-breaking strategies, depressing thoughts and things like that. Here, what happened with me was that the seed of anger was converted to doubt. I could hear myself asking me, is this guy for real or is he just conning me?
“Something wrong?” he asked me when he caught me staring. “No, no. I was just waiting for you to continue. I still am!” was my cold reply.
“Yeah, well, I forgot where I was and you don’t seem to be reminding me. Have some pity on a tipsy fellow, my dear alcoholic brother in arms,” he said with a chuckle that only irritated me all the more. “Calm down, this is interesting. Bear with it, this stupidity is worth the information,” is what I repeatedly told myself to prevent punching his jaw.
“Yeah, well, I forgot where I was and you don’t seem to be reminding me. Have some pity on a tipsy fellow, my dear alcoholic brother in arms,” he said with a chuckle that only irritated me all the more. “Calm down, this is interesting. Bear with it, this stupidity is worth the information,” is what I repeatedly told myself to prevent punching his jaw.
“You were despising those who picked coins from the bowl of the blind beggar,” I coaxed him. “Exactamente! Yes, that was where I was. But sadly I don’t remember why I brought that up. I think it is natural that this happens after a few drinks. Even if it isn’t, with me it is... Like now for example; I don’t know how many drinks I have had but I’ve had enough to get me high; to get me to that condition where my head begins swimming and I talk about so many things that are in no way connected... what thoughts are in your head now, I wonder,” he directed his drunk breath toward me.
“Mine? Well, the appreciation I guess, of the fact that though you are high you are in a position to acknowledge it.”
“Yes, right. I have to say this; you have been very interesting to talk to. It has been my good luck that we met here,” he said grinning like he just won a bravery award.
“Glad to be of service!” I replied, my haughtiness only supported by the few drinks that I had had. That made him silent, momentarily, and he returned to his drink, staring at the glass, as if trying to recollect what it contained. “This martini, simple and plain, was the symbol of a con artist, you know? He was very much influenced by movies, and each time he successfully conned someone, he would leave a glass of martini on the scene which had a red colouring to it. It was nicknamed the bloody martini by the police.”
Once again, he had got my rapt attention. I think I was amazed in a way that after so many drinks he was still in a position to be story-telling.
“No way..! Now I’m sure you’re taking it a bit too far. This is too fantastic even for someone in your field, right?” This time around, I was too interested to stay on my guard.
“A question again, as expected. I’ve got used to it now! Don’t worry; I’ll prove to you in a moment, that it isn’t fantastic or anything. If you’ll excuse me now, I’ll flush out the excess liquids in my body and be back in a jiffy.”
“By all means, be my guest,” I said with a smile. I had the feeling of having won a lottery. Here I was, just half an hour ago wondering where I’d get a story from and some drunken stranger provides me with a treasure trove! I was excited. I wanted to take notes and for that, I would have to stop this evening’s drinking session. The smile never left my face even as I finished my drink in one go and signalled for the waiter. Before he could ask, I told the waiter, “I’ll have my bill now please, and a few tissues, thank you very much.”
The waiter looked startled. The look on his face was one which said, I have seen many weird requests from drunkards but this is stupid even by that level. “But your friend just paid your bill sir, not less than a minute ago!”
I wondered if I was drunk or he was. “I’m sorry, what do you mean?” I demanded.
“Your friend sir, the one sitting on your left, he came to the billing desk and said that you both had finished ordering and since he was in a hurry he was leaving before you. He also said that he was paying your bill since you were his best friend from your childhood days, and he also left a huge tip. Then he asked the valet attendant to remove your car and he handed over the keys and left from the counter,” said the waiter, and I felt like he was hammering a nail into my little toe with each word of his. The disbelief was immense, and I froze, possibly scaring the waiter into thinking that I had a fit.
“Are you ok sir, is everything fine?” he tapped on my shoulder.
That was the cue for the volcano to erupt. I jumped from my chair and shouted, “No you fool, and nothing is fine. He is not my friend and he definitely doesn’t have the permission to even touch my car, let alone ride it. Now run to the parking and stop him!”
He ran like a rabbit that had just seen a dog about to attack it, and I tried following him, clumsily bumping into a few tables and almost falling once. By the time I reached him, the car had gone and all that remained was a happy valet attendant who received a nice tip and an exhausted waiter. All this was happening too fast for my drunk brain to process. I wouldn’t have known what to do even if I was sober, and in my present condition, I was utterly pathetic. After a couple of minutes trying to figure things out, the obvious thing crept into mind. “How the hell did he get my keys?” I asked the bewildered waiter. “I already told you, he said that you were his childhood friend so we all assumed that you gave them yourself.” I couldn’t totally blame him. It was a well constructed lie, and I had no proof nor defence against it. But how did he actually get the keys? The answer was easy. He flicked it from my coat which was lying on a chair next to me. That meant the coat still had to be on the chair. I ran back, clumsily of course, to where I had been sitting to find the scene untouched. Walking slowly to my chair, I picked up my coat and checked its pockets only to find the car keys missing from the left pocket and the wallet missing from the right.
The feeling was hard to describe. It was calamitous to say the very least. The loss of personal effects and important documents in the wallet weren’t as great as the feeling of defeat combined with the feeling of being cheated. What made it worse was that I was continually being given the feeling that I was having the upper hand. As I sat there gloomily reflecting on my ghastly misfortune, I happened to notice that his glass was still there, as it was when he had left it there, and yet something was a touch different about it. I sat on his chair, trying to find out the difference. The tissue on which the glass was kept had three words written shabbily on it, and I held it to the light to see what they were. It said, YOU WERE SUPERB and that only added insult to injuries. But the nagging feeling that there was something different there hadn’t completely vanished. I raised that wretched glass toward the dimly lit bulb and there it was; the final horror – the bloody martini.
It is positively cringe-worthy. You have been warned.
“Don’t serve me once my bill crosses 350 bucks; it’s all I have on me tonight,” he said to the bartender as his fourth drink of the evening was placed in front of him. It appeared to me as a strange request. I couldn’t stop myself from turning to my left and seeing the face of this man who apparently had no self-restraint. He was very ordinary, a face you wouldn’t remember from a crowd. No distinguishing features in appearance or clothing, but he had the manners of a thoroughbred. “Last week of the month you see, not much cash remains,” he said to me with a smile that was both apologetic and a justification from the perspective of his strange request. I nodded and returned the smile.
The irony of my presence at the bar was that I was very badly in need of a break. I was trying to build upon an idea for a story but couldn’t even get started but finally ended up getting a story here. Long back I had watched a movie where this nerdy character could identify people who had strange lives which could make interesting stories. At this point in life, I was wishing that I’d known him somehow...
“I’m sorry, but do you have a light?” this man asked me, breaking my reverie. “Um, no. I don’t smoke,” I said. Maybe it appeared to him that I was depressed with life, an alcoholic trying to drown his sorrows on the rocks. It is natural for one to be biased towards himself and so this presumptive thought of mine as to what he thought of me felt slightly offensive. A friend of mine who had studied psychology had once told me that it is easy to get negative thoughts when you are not happy. I remember telling her that you needn’t study psychology for that info; grandmas would give it to you free of cost. But now I got the actual meaning of what she said. So much for Mr Freud!
I’ve always believed that life’s definitions change with age, or time if it is more polite. Back in the days of studying, timetables meant which person would waste his time as well as mine. Now, it meant that you sleep around a certain time of the day, wake up at another particular time gap, and so on. Monotony, in a way that appeared very flexible but never was. Think of it. You wake up daily at around seven, not exactly seven; thanks to the snooze button. Possibly you brush, bathe and get ready in the next sixty minutes. Maybe the time you dedicate for each action varies with the day of the week but the time gap is still the same; 0700-0800hrs. Breakfast is finished with the newspaper in the next thirty minutes and you leave home by about 0830-0845hrs. But mostly somewhere in between would be the actual time. Anyway, in my life’s monotony, I go to bed at around 2300hrs, which indirectly meant I had to leave by 2130hrs. Around 2130hrs I mean. I assumed it was five or ten minutes past eight and raised my left arm to check the time, and found that my watch was missing. It took me a few moments to remember that I’d given it for repairs for changing the glass. “It’s 8.07, sir,” he said leaning over to me.
“Excuse me?”
“I presumed you wanted the time and understood you have no watch, for now, so I informed you of the time,” he explained; his mischievous smile returning. I was almost nonchalant. “Fourth drink and you can still observe such minute details? What are you, a secret spy?” I wanted to be on par with him in cracking drunkard jokes. I’m not sure if it was the joke or something else but he laughed loudly, much to the annoyance of a few people around. “My name’s Bond, James Bond!” he said with a smile which clearly indicated he was not sober anymore.
“Well sadly, I’m not the sexy woman you’d seduce,” I replied; quietly grinning for having won this round of jokes as well. He became just a bit less funny and asked, “So what brings you here, to this gloomy place when most people spend time with their families?”
“Ah well, I dunno... I guess you can say work pressure.”
“Right, pretty common,” he nodded.
“Hmmm... What about you? Family throw you out?”
“Not really, no. I’m a wanderer, a lonely soul. This is just one of the many pit stops that I have.”
I didn’t like the tone of that. It could imply anything, from malice to threaten; or from sympathy to homosexuality. Maybe even from eccentricity to a career in tourism but it was insufficient data for concrete analysis. Plus, the fact that I’m an introvert but found it easy to chat with this person seemed disturbingly uncharacteristic. Feeling a sense of urgency to change the track, I gulped down my drink and ordered another one.
It appeared to have worked. He was silent, but only for five seconds, after which he started acting the clown again and ordered for a vodka martini! Worse, he followed it with a “shaken, not stirred” irritation. “Sir Fleming just turned in his grave I think,” I smiled.
“You know all this Bond hype? It’s fake. It’s also created and manipulated. They always say Bond was created based on Fleming’s friend...”
“‘Sir’ Fleming,” I tried to correct him. He stared at me, putting on a look which had annoyance in it as much as it had anger.
“Doesn’t matter, now that he’s turned in his grave, does it?” he said, winked and smiled altogether. I accepted my defeat.
“Anyway, Bond wasn’t created based on his friend as they say. It was just an idea that occurred to him when he was getting high at a beach bar in the Caribbean. How he got the idea when he was drunk you ask? Easy! He was just talking to the waiter who said he’d rather go to college than serve drinks. Bloke asked why he was serving then and he says his dad is a spy and so he can’t afford school. Remember, back in the days espionage was an essentiality, not a career option for hunks with an IQ of 200+ and lightning reflexes. They didn’t get flashy cars, striped suits and Swiss accounts with eight digits amounts in it. Espionage was for the litter bags, for those morons who couldn’t find any other job, not even hacking beef at the local butcher’s. There was nothing to be proud of in it; there was just risk. The one thing possibly that hasn’t changed over the years is that they are still expected to give up their lives before giving out any info. You might remember, it was near the ‘50s and ‘60s that Bond was born. What does that mean? Fleming, Sir Fleming I mean, took enough time to collect details of these poor lost boys of the world wars and then felt obliged to honour them. So he did just that. He made spies and spying appear classy. He took them from the closet, dusted them, painted them and placed them next to Batman and Superman. He made them better, I might add. They still wore their underwear inside their pants and they were still humans; living, operating and fearing in between other humans itself... Yeah, he made them that; and then some! How could I forget? He added the most attractive part as an afterthought – women. Imagine, Bond gets like at least a couple of chicks in each story. Has anyone ever wondered why he never got AIDS? Condoms ain’t the answer my friend; that was protection and it came much later. Give it a thought. When Bond was making merry, AIDS was unknown. So, in essence, the author never knew of the existence of what is quite possibly the most dangerous STD of all times all over the world. That was why Bond was immune. Get you thinking, have I now? That’s the point. Slam-bang-whizz-kiss-story ends; everyone is happy. Nobody wants to dig for the truth. Oh yes sir, I noticed the movement of your eyebrows. I know you have a question. Most likely it is about Sir Fleming’s presence in the British defence. Well, he was there, he served in it. So what? Thousands of them were there. They served, they retired. Most lived a silent retired life and died a silent death; our man took a cigar and a pen. Talk about standing out in the crowd! He sure did that. Vodka martini my butt.”
I was stunned. But I did not want him to know he had me interested in this. I still felt compelled to be a step ahead of him. Being unaware of how to react, I returned to complete my drink. It became a priority to win this battle. Being egotistical has its troubles as it becomes hard to let go without coming up trumps. So, there it was. I had to reply, I had to counter-attack.
“That must be your favourite trick.” There was a fake boredom in my voice.
“I didn’t get you,” he said. He sounded confused, which immediately gave me the sense of having the upper hand again.
“All this criticism of Bond and the author, backed by the apparent historical connection... you do this at every bar you go to, I feel. Maybe impress a couple o’ guys, have them gawking at you and then enjoy the attention. You might even be bought a drink or who knows, get laid! I don’t deny the intelligence that is oozing out o’ you have got to end up in someone else’s brain, but then it simply isn’t good manners to disrespect an idea that has been well set in the minds of the general public. Correct me if I’m wrong but it is undoubtedly the inclusion of the apparent ‘facts’ about spies and espionage of yesteryears that fuels this verbal blitzkrieg to produce convincing stories, although faux and unconfirmed, making you the star of the evening. I was impressed as well, I’ll admit. But not with the story, it was with your idea. All the same, you never explained the sources of your findings in this research of the making of Bond. That, my friend, is a flaw. A loophole, I might add. Pardon me, but Sir Fleming turned in his grave again! In the opposite direction this time and almost certainly he would want to pat my back.”
It was his turn to be stunned and mine to remain at peace. I gladly looked away from him as he continued staring; slowly and smoothly. I felt like Hannibal Lector, getting inside the mind of the investigating officer and yet remaining behind the bars at all times.
“So you think I’m lying?” The pain was obvious and maybe justified for him. He was after all, in all probability getting the attention he yearned for. Maybe it worked till he met me this fateful evening.
“I didn’t say that. I just pointed out that there is no evidence for what you claim. You gave me some facts, startling facts but no proof. Nor did you present before me the modus operandi of how you acquired them. That’s all. I’m not enjoying troubling you if that thought is bugging you. I’m not a sadist, just a pessimist; a cynical pessimist at best but surely not a sadist. You can say I’m the kind o’ guy who’d prefer discussing boring economic projections to extramarital affairs, simply for the fact that the projections are made taking into account the data available up to the previous year...”
I was messing up his mind, or so I thought. Or what was left of it anyway. He’d been tipsy for a while now. And all I needed for disturbing it was a simple but assertive projection of truth. Robert Ludlum through Bourne had said that the complexity of a trap lies in its simplicity. I was hoping to do something similar. I was being the architect of his downfall and yet on the surface, I was just indulging in a drunken conversation. Who would suspect?
“Would anything change if I were to tell you I found out these and many other facts related to scams before I was fired from the research wing of a renowned museum?” There was seriousness in his voice and he sounded like he was negotiating a million dollar deal which was slipping out of his hands.
“I think not. I wouldn’t know you were employed, nor would I know about you being fired. Add to it the fact that you didn’t name either the museum or the reason why you were fired.”
“That’s it! I can’t take it anymore. I am angry now, not because you have been prodding the hollowness in my facts but because you talk like you know everything. You seem to be closed to the possibility that sometimes people are bound by invisible strings that control their lives to the extent of even manipulating their breath. Believe me, hypothetical situations are sometimes more troubling than the harshest of realities. The misfortune that looms over the very existence of a few condemned souls would make death seem like a reward. I hope you at least subscribe to the fact that what is a very huge problem for one might not even be a bother for another. It is the same kind of reasoning that I can give you about my employment and the lack of proofs for what I’ve been saying. I’m not asking you for compassion or sympathy but just look at it from a different angle. Make an assumption that I did provide proof and then do your analyses. Even though you may not admit it, you will begin wondering if this was how it actually was; if this was the truth and yet you were accepting falsifications as facts. Go on, close your eyes and give it a thought. Imagine the possibility of what I said being the real truth.”
This was bad. He was getting emotional and that meant he was getting weak. I couldn’t help being sympathetic. Yet, what he said was food for thought. Imagine that he was right! Interesting...
“Got you pretty bad, have I? Alright; I call for a truce. Here’s the deal – I won’t question your ‘facts’ and you are going to tell me about these scams. How about it?”
He did not reply immediately. It appeared that he was suspicious of me now and it would be hard to blame him for it. After all, I had been cutting him across all this while. Or was he calculating his next move? I’d never know!
“How do I trust that you are the kind of listener I would like talking to? We haven’t been getting along quite well so far,” he said matter-of-factly.
“And what is the kind of listener you would like to be talking to, exactly?”
“Not your kind of listeners, for sure! Ah, my word; your exorbitant haughtiness. You think too highly of yourself, sir. Not a good attitude that is. You are too full of yourself; you are supporting yourself on your ego. Your pride, more often than not, comes in the way of your rational thinking.”
“Hmmm... But I thought we agreed upon to listen to what you had to say about your work-related or ex-work related, actual or factual scams or whatever it is that they are. Instead, we end up listening to an analysis of my personality of which I must inform you, nothing is new for me.”
“See? This is what I’ve been saying!!! Be a listener for God’s sake, not a questioner. Blessed must have been your teachers if they managed to stay alive while teaching you. Honestly, did you not question them why the Arc-de-Triomphe was built in France and not in India?”
“Surprisingly for you my dear friend, I did not ask that question. I only happened to question the very idea of its construction, in France or India or elsewhere.”
I, in my entire ego, would never give in to him; or to anyone for that matter. It is a weakness as well as strength. But so far, only once in my life had it been used against me, forcing me to make it my weakness and breaking me apart. Was this stranger to be the second one in that list or yet another addition to the long list of victims of my ego? Only time would tell.
He laughed heartily again. “You are impossible! I have seen witty blokes and I have seen huge-headed people. But what is different in you is that though you have high quantities of both, they are balancing each other out so you get admired, silently but strongly.”
I had been taught ages ago that if people praise you it is mostly to their advantage, so don’t heed to it. It had been repeatedly drilled into my mind and that became counterproductive; in a way. Now when people actually praised me, without intent, I would still take a step back.
“How very nice of you, but I’m not into dating males. Sorry. Well, now that we’ve buried that hatchet, I guess we can move on. How about you start spinning your mills of endless yarn, so that I get to know what kind of scams are there which have been the cruxes of your esteemed work?”
“Hard talk there eh, monsieur? Alright-y now, here goes nothing. I need your (hic) confidence that you will not discuss this elsewhere, putting confidentiality into jeopardy.”
“Non monsieur, what you need is water. You have begun losing balance, if you’ve noticed. I’m thankful that these chairs have backs or I’d have had to pick you up from the floor by now. As for jeopardising the confidentiality, you seem to be doing it better than me as it were, right now. You have my word.”
“Go talk to Shakespeare like that. Give me plain words and plain English, if you must. And some water like you said... Merci monsieur.”
A couple of beers on an empty stomach do have an effect on the mind, surely. It loosens you a bit. I get an impression that in my case this was the exact reason why I could chat so easily with him. I poured him a glass of water and he downed it in a single gulp.
“Ah... that was refreshing!” he said contentedly. “So, where do I begin with? Hmmm... Alright. There are scams and there are huge, really huge, scams. Like the Enron ones or the Goldman Sachs things, which are blockbusters in themselves. I never got to play around with cases of such magnitude; because to be honest, they are not really as interesting as the tiny ingenuities. I was more inclined towards getting to know scams which were so well organised and yet had such low profiles that it would be very long and very hard to even uncover them. They are things that happen daily, right in front of you. But like I said, they are too tiny that the common man doesn’t bother about them. What newspaper do you read daily?”
“Huh? What do you mean? What does the paper that I read have to do anything with this? And why does it come all of a sudden from nowhere?”
“Well never mind the name. How much does it cost? Don’t answer that. Three bucks, usually. Standard prices will be like that, anywhere, right? Yes, of course. There was this orphan who was given this job of paper distribution by a kind bank manager. Now of course that banker wasn’t wealthy enough for a full blown adoption and so he did what he could and ensured a living at least. The orphan, who started out young, maybe when he was nine I think, went on to make a million in the next 17 years after which he bought a stake in the bank that his patron was working in, and presented him half of that stake; in return for having kept him alive. Please! No questions from you. Just listen with the assumption that proof is provided. Imagine, paper distribution gave him millions. How? He devised a brilliant method, and yet so simple that no could ever say nor do anything about it or against it. There are 365 days a year, right? So imagine you pay three bucks each day for the paper. That is nearly a grand a year from one household per paper. When he started off, he was handed over the responsibility of a colony with merely 11 or 12 houses. That meant ten grand a year, counting income only. But, the difference is that there were different papers and that meant different prices. Now, what would happen if for 25 days a month you paid for your paper, and the rest of the days for another paper? The difference would be hardly noticeable. Expecting a bill of say something near a hundred you would pay that, without cross checking. This boy, God, what a brain he had! He would deliberately misplace the papers and the households. Give a pricier paper one in a while to an unsuspecting customer and charge him much more by playing around with his bill. You get me here?”
“No, I’m not sure I get the math part of it. Finally, no matter which paper you receive, you pay only for those. So where’s the loss?”
“It is exactly this thought that made a job as flimsy as paper distribution a cash milking cow here. The math is like this: you get your three buck paper for 25 days. For 3 days you get a paper that costs 4 and for the remaining 2 days, you get a 2 buck paper. You wouldn’t keep track of such minute details right? Anyway, in this arrangement, the bill is 25 times 3 plus 3 times 4 plus 2 times 2. That makes it 91. Now, in the bill, you are given 26 times 3 plus 4 times 4 plus 1 time 2 which is 96. Get the math now?”
“No way! 5 bucks extra per paper per house, which is 50 to 60 extra a month for the colony and roughly 3/4th of a grand each year. Agreed he makes a profit but how’s he going to make millions of this? At this rate, 17 years would only make 17 grand. Taking 2 or 3 papers a house would double it or worse, triple it making half a million at best. No, you got your math wrong.”
“Agreed totally, but you forgot a tiny detail. There is a banker, so there is an account, so there is an interest, and in 17 yrs my friend, it more than doubles. It inflates, almost obscenely. His patience paid off, and in the range of 31 to 33 times the initial investment. That was done majorly by the banker’s knowledge, shifting it from one fund to the other for higher returns. Of course, he wasn’t to blame. He was still helping the boy he picked from the street after all. In fact, he never got to know about the scam and when he did, he was so enraged that he donated the stake he was presented and quit his job citing ‘personally binding moral and ethical implications.’ Then he left the city and relocated to a city which he never made known to many. Clearly, he was very shaken by the happenings.”
That was a brilliant story. The only thing I could do was sit and stare in awe. Newspapers and millions, is there even a comparison? And yet, this fraud was such a speck of dust that would hardly be noticed. It took me some time to get back to my usual, irritatingly questioning self.
“Wow... he gets my respect and admiration. What’s his name?”
“Oh no! No names or details like that. No country names or street names, or names of banks or anything. I am already spilling out so much, I can’t risk more.”
“Jeez, you are weird, I say! Fine, can I at least ask you how the fraud was uncovered and if he was nabbed?”
I couldn’t understand what was it that I said which made him stare at me like he was a Jew and I was Hitler, but chained. If it was a magnum or a sawn-off in his hand instead of a bar glass he’d have probably blown my head off to smithereens!
“What? Why are you staring at me?” I asked him, scared and confused. The thought of him being a homosexual serial rapist killer did have crossed my mind although it was apparently farfetched. But the point is the thought had crossed.
“You watch movies?” he asked me. I would have started to explain elaborately about my love for movies but somehow I was able to stop myself. Considering that I had downed a few drinks, it was an achievement.
“Sometimes, when I am free and when there’s a movie available. Why so?” I replied.
“Watched Match Point by Woody Allen?”
“Your man starred in that movie? Nice break he got, I’ll say.” My attempts to get over him were involuntary and clearly irritating.
“Where were you born, in a veterinary hospital? What kind of an A-hole answers a question with a question?” He was angry and it showed with the choice of his words.
“My kind. Fine, I’m sorry. Now the answer is yes, I have. What of it?”
“A question again! Heavens, you are the limit... chuck it. The thing that I wanted to say is that you saw that the movie ended without the hero getting caught. Same here. There might have been a fraud but there has been no case, no proof. He might be guilty but legally he’s clean as a whistle.”
“And parents all over believe that education gives you intelligence. Nice idea, as it happens. He’s still in the business? I mean it is one thing to have your paper boy as a millionaire and the eccentricity too, is something to smile about.” I was trying to replace his anger with smiles but I could only provide lame jokes.
“Like I said, no details. That was one of the nicest cases. Simple, effective and neat.”
“I’ll say. How many such cases would’ve happened? Not the paper boy becomes millionaire stories but million-worth scams which go untraceable?” This was soon becoming an interview.
“Lots of them in fact. The amount of such cases is so overwhelming that when I was new to the job I refused to believe it. The human is always a sucker for greed. Even the straightest of arrows can be bent. If not with pressure, then with force, but they bend. There’s no one who is clean and sane. The worst ones are not those who pick on their own, the worst are those who pick on the helpless. You don’t feel like dropping a coin into a blind beggar’s bowl, I don’t despise you. But you pick the coins from his bowl; I pray that you have the worst of deaths.”
I clearly remember thinking at that moment that whatever he’s having must be good. He was going on like the Oriental Express in its full glory. What made it even more evident was that he was getting philosophical and using ironic metaphors.
When he stopped this time, I was confused between the options of butting into his conversation and waiting for him to continue. I did not want to break his flow by talking and I was not used to waiting for such a long time in a monologue, and I was feeling uneasy. Luckily for me, he continued without my provocation.
“You hear about the best French wines being prepared by processed which include the grapes being crushed by feet? The belief is that this process has some contribution to the magnificent taste. I mean feet and taste? What is the connection anyway!” he said and guffawed. It already amazed me that there was a scam in this as well! I was all ears.
“Anyway, this particular fact just popped into my mind when I saw that wine bottle over there, that’s all. So where was I?”
What a dampener... He had me excited for a moment there. There was a tiny bout of anger welling up deep inside me. I felt like I was just taken for a ride. When you are alone, it always happens that you talk to yourself inside your head, that it’s a never ending conversation you have with the inner person inside you, that one thought leads to another continuously and you might get violent mood swings, amazing ideas, path-breaking strategies, depressing thoughts and things like that. Here, what happened with me was that the seed of anger was converted to doubt. I could hear myself asking me, is this guy for real or is he just conning me?
“Something wrong?” he asked me when he caught me staring. “No, no. I was just waiting for you to continue. I still am!” was my cold reply.
“Yeah, well, I forgot where I was and you don’t seem to be reminding me. Have some pity on a tipsy fellow, my dear alcoholic brother in arms,” he said with a chuckle that only irritated me all the more. “Calm down, this is interesting. Bear with it, this stupidity is worth the information,” is what I repeatedly told myself to prevent punching his jaw.
“Yeah, well, I forgot where I was and you don’t seem to be reminding me. Have some pity on a tipsy fellow, my dear alcoholic brother in arms,” he said with a chuckle that only irritated me all the more. “Calm down, this is interesting. Bear with it, this stupidity is worth the information,” is what I repeatedly told myself to prevent punching his jaw.
“You were despising those who picked coins from the bowl of the blind beggar,” I coaxed him. “Exactamente! Yes, that was where I was. But sadly I don’t remember why I brought that up. I think it is natural that this happens after a few drinks. Even if it isn’t, with me it is... Like now for example; I don’t know how many drinks I have had but I’ve had enough to get me high; to get me to that condition where my head begins swimming and I talk about so many things that are in no way connected... what thoughts are in your head now, I wonder,” he directed his drunk breath toward me.
“Mine? Well, the appreciation I guess, of the fact that though you are high you are in a position to acknowledge it.”
“Yes, right. I have to say this; you have been very interesting to talk to. It has been my good luck that we met here,” he said grinning like he just won a bravery award.
“Glad to be of service!” I replied, my haughtiness only supported by the few drinks that I had had. That made him silent, momentarily, and he returned to his drink, staring at the glass, as if trying to recollect what it contained. “This martini, simple and plain, was the symbol of a con artist, you know? He was very much influenced by movies, and each time he successfully conned someone, he would leave a glass of martini on the scene which had a red colouring to it. It was nicknamed the bloody martini by the police.”
Once again, he had got my rapt attention. I think I was amazed in a way that after so many drinks he was still in a position to be story-telling.
“No way..! Now I’m sure you’re taking it a bit too far. This is too fantastic even for someone in your field, right?” This time around, I was too interested to stay on my guard.
“A question again, as expected. I’ve got used to it now! Don’t worry; I’ll prove to you in a moment, that it isn’t fantastic or anything. If you’ll excuse me now, I’ll flush out the excess liquids in my body and be back in a jiffy.”
“By all means, be my guest,” I said with a smile. I had the feeling of having won a lottery. Here I was, just half an hour ago wondering where I’d get a story from and some drunken stranger provides me with a treasure trove! I was excited. I wanted to take notes and for that, I would have to stop this evening’s drinking session. The smile never left my face even as I finished my drink in one go and signalled for the waiter. Before he could ask, I told the waiter, “I’ll have my bill now please, and a few tissues, thank you very much.”
The waiter looked startled. The look on his face was one which said, I have seen many weird requests from drunkards but this is stupid even by that level. “But your friend just paid your bill sir, not less than a minute ago!”
I wondered if I was drunk or he was. “I’m sorry, what do you mean?” I demanded.
“Your friend sir, the one sitting on your left, he came to the billing desk and said that you both had finished ordering and since he was in a hurry he was leaving before you. He also said that he was paying your bill since you were his best friend from your childhood days, and he also left a huge tip. Then he asked the valet attendant to remove your car and he handed over the keys and left from the counter,” said the waiter, and I felt like he was hammering a nail into my little toe with each word of his. The disbelief was immense, and I froze, possibly scaring the waiter into thinking that I had a fit.
“Are you ok sir, is everything fine?” he tapped on my shoulder.
That was the cue for the volcano to erupt. I jumped from my chair and shouted, “No you fool, and nothing is fine. He is not my friend and he definitely doesn’t have the permission to even touch my car, let alone ride it. Now run to the parking and stop him!”
He ran like a rabbit that had just seen a dog about to attack it, and I tried following him, clumsily bumping into a few tables and almost falling once. By the time I reached him, the car had gone and all that remained was a happy valet attendant who received a nice tip and an exhausted waiter. All this was happening too fast for my drunk brain to process. I wouldn’t have known what to do even if I was sober, and in my present condition, I was utterly pathetic. After a couple of minutes trying to figure things out, the obvious thing crept into mind. “How the hell did he get my keys?” I asked the bewildered waiter. “I already told you, he said that you were his childhood friend so we all assumed that you gave them yourself.” I couldn’t totally blame him. It was a well constructed lie, and I had no proof nor defence against it. But how did he actually get the keys? The answer was easy. He flicked it from my coat which was lying on a chair next to me. That meant the coat still had to be on the chair. I ran back, clumsily of course, to where I had been sitting to find the scene untouched. Walking slowly to my chair, I picked up my coat and checked its pockets only to find the car keys missing from the left pocket and the wallet missing from the right.
The feeling was hard to describe. It was calamitous to say the very least. The loss of personal effects and important documents in the wallet weren’t as great as the feeling of defeat combined with the feeling of being cheated. What made it worse was that I was continually being given the feeling that I was having the upper hand. As I sat there gloomily reflecting on my ghastly misfortune, I happened to notice that his glass was still there, as it was when he had left it there, and yet something was a touch different about it. I sat on his chair, trying to find out the difference. The tissue on which the glass was kept had three words written shabbily on it, and I held it to the light to see what they were. It said, YOU WERE SUPERB and that only added insult to injuries. But the nagging feeling that there was something different there hadn’t completely vanished. I raised that wretched glass toward the dimly lit bulb and there it was; the final horror – the bloody martini.
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